Project description:

The combined interests of our team led us to creating a detection device. We began with brainstorming devices to identify waterborne pathogens, however we came to the realisation that although these issues have huge world significance, they are better tackled by education and water sterilisation techniques than synthetic biology. We then moved onto the ever increasing issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), currently estimated to claim as many as 700,000 lives a year and risks all modern healthcare becoming redundant. To combat growing resistance, clinicians often conduct antimicrobial susceptibility tests (ASTs) to identify effective drugs and avoid the use of broad-spectrum drugs, which are more likely to contribute to resistance. The gold standard for this test is disc diffusion. However this method involves two 12 hour incubation steps, making it too time consuming.

Our aim is to therefore create a more rapid AST device, that can bypass this incubation bottleneck and produce a result in just a few hours. Our device measures bacterial growth of a patient sample incubated in a 48 well plate, with each well containing no, low or high concentrations of a variety of antibiotics. A light sensitive component placed under the sample records the difference in light received across the sample. As the bacteria grow, and the sample becomes more opaque, less light is received onto the light sensitive component and a drop in voltage is measured across the component and sent to a server in real time. This will indicate the species is sensitive to the antibiotic, and therefore the drug would be a valid treatment option. Both the use of opacity and real time tracking makes our test extremely rapid. In order ensure we are measuring growth of only the pathogen, as opposed to commensal microorganisms which live harmlessly in the body, we have decided to create two organism-specific devices as proof of concept of our product. The first will combat urinary tract infections (UTI’s), which are among the most frequent and highly antimicrobial resistant infections in the world. The second will target MRSA, the famously widespread and virulent hospital-acquired infection in which staff and patient screening is critical for its control.